Badger welfare is significantly affected by the bovine tuberculosis control policy, with both the culling programme and perturbation effects causing welfare harm to social groups.
Badger welfare is profoundly affected by the bovine tuberculosis control programme, through both direct and indirect mechanisms. Direct welfare harm comes from the culling itself: free-shooting of badgers, the most widely used culling method, is associated with a significant proportion of shot badgers not dying immediately, with studies suggesting 5-22% of shot badgers are not killed outright and may survive for extended periods with injuries. Cage trapping followed by shooting provides more reliable humane death but has its own welfare costs in the trapping period. Indirect welfare harm comes from perturbation: surviving badgers from disrupted social groups expand their ranging behaviour, causing stress from increased inter-group conflict and the disruption of established social structures. Badger clans have stable social hierarchies and territorial patterns built up over generations - disruption of these structures causes measurable behavioural stress responses. Vaccination as an alternative to culling preserves social group integrity and avoids the welfare harm of killing, while providing some reduction in TB transmission within badger populations.